Roddy Piper vs. Ed Wiskowski (2/3 falls) (8/23/80)

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Roddy Piper vs. Ed Wiskowski (2/3 falls) (8/23/80)

Disc 2

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First fall: ​I'd always wondered what a Piper-DeBeers match would be like, and now I know: a total war. Just as Jay and Buddy tried to tear each other's arms off in the last match, so these two try to destroy each other's legs, with tactics both legal and illegal. My favorite spot of the sequence has to be Piper biting the inside of Wiskowski's thigh, which not only puts him over as a total Wildman but is also sound psychology within the match.

 

Big Ed sure can bump when the time is right. He just misses being too theatrical by a hair. Piper's not nearly the bumper Wiskowski is, but does an excellent job selling the leg to make up for it.

 

I liked Don's spiel at the beginning of the match about there being too many loser-leave-town matches lately. "At this rate, I'll be the only one left to get in the ring!"

 

I guess Buddy's hair is still growing back the way he likes it, which is why he's got a mask on.. I saw him with it briefly when it was shown in the extras, and he's much better looking without it.

 

After all the work he did on Ed's knee, Piper won the first fall with a rather sloppy reverse neckbreaker. He's up one-zip with about thirteen minutes of disc time remaining.

 

Second fall: ​This didn't look like it would be too exciting at first, as Piper applied what seemed to be a never-ending nervehold on the back of Wiskowski's neck. Eventually things heated up when the two began to brawl outside, as Wiskowski slammed Piper on the floor and rammed his head into the ice cream vendor's stand. Rod never quite recovered from all the abuse, and eventually Easy Ed won the fall with a diving headbutt from the top. We're even at a fall apiece with five minutes of disc time remaining.

 

It seems that Frank has had to admonish fans about getting out of their seats a lot lately. The guy who got into it with Wiskowski couldn't have been over a hundred and fifty pounds and looked about fifty years old. What could he have been thinking?

 

Imagine a time when Sandy was the backup referee. As for Buddy, how the hell did he get away with injuring Savage (who was refereeing his match at the time) without being suspended or barred for life?

 

Boy, what a tough choice for Seattle viewers, with both the Portland and Seattle versions of the show on at the exact same time. Hopefully somebody got that problem corrected in a hurry, because from what I've understood each show had special content that couldn't be found on the other. Frank's suggestion about taping one of the shows was a good one, but how many people owned VCRs back in the fall of 1980? More than a few years earlier, certainly, but not nearly as many as would own one a few years later.

 

So they called Buddy "The Crippler" before Oliver came along. The stuff you learn from watching this old footage!

 

​Third fall: ​This one didn't take long, as after a few minutes Buddy interfered when Piper and Wiskowski were fighting outside. Rod fought him off once, but Buddy tripped him the second time, leading to a Wiskowski pin. I'm not sure whether Sandy actually saw the interference or not, but he reversed the decision anyway, which earned him a squashing from Buddy while Ed opened Piper's forehead. The fight eventually spilled into the Crow's Nest, and ended up with Piper accepting Wiskowski's loser-leave-town challenge for the following Wednesday, with Buddy suspended in a cage above the ring.

 

Yet another idiot fan got involved, or maybe it was the same guy from before. At any rate, we got another warning from Frank about fans getting involved in the matches, which makes the third or fourth one on this disc alone. Maybe those who get involved have been out in the rain so long that their brains have rusted.

 

If I remember correctly, Piper won the match a few days later, which sent Big Ed out of the Northwest and set up yet another loser-leave-town between Piper and Buddy, which is the second match on Disc 2.